Briefing: Trading Up

The company that first put the Palm Pilot in your pocket is launching two new handhelds, the Tungsten T5 and the Treo 650 PDA phone. The 650 is not a radical redesign of the immensely popular Treo 600--appearance-wise, it's actually hard to tell the older model from the new one--but it is an all around improvement. The LCD screen looks better in sunlight, and the internal memory holds data even after the battery has drained. With certain service providers, the new Treo will be able to access a fast data network known as EDGE, giving it better-than-dial-up speeds for surfing or downloading files. It also supports Bluetooth networking, so you can link up a wireless headset.

Upsizing is the theme of the $400 Tungsten T5. With an enlarged screen and 256 MB of internal memory, it's a better desktop-to-go than its predecessors. Managing your files is easier too: instead of using complicated, time-consuming software to synch up documents, you can just drag them from PC to PDA and back again.--By Wilson Rothman